Friedrich Meinecke

Friedrich Meinecke, (born Oct. 30, 1862, Salzwedel, Prussia—died Feb. 6, 1954, Berlin), the leading German historian of the first half of the 20th century and, together with his teacher Wilhelm Dilthey, a founding father of modern intellectualhistoriography.

Meinecke was a professor at Strassburg (1901), Freiburg im Breisgau (1906), and Berlin (1914–28) and was editor of the Historische Zeitschrift,Germany’s most important historical journal, from 1896 until he was dismissed during the Nazi regime in 1935.

Meinecke’s development from an admirer of Bismarck and the power state to a moderate liberal who emphasized Humanist values in the German past is reflected in his works. In Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (1908; Cosmopolitanism and the National State), he optimistically traced Germany’s emergence from the cosmopolitanism of the 18th century to the nationalism of the 19th. His Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte (1924; Machiavellism; the Doctrine of Raison d’État and Its Place in Modern History) has been read as both a handbook and a condemnation of power politics. In it he questioned the validity of the notion that the sovereign state is the embodiment of the highest ethical values and that political necessity justifies the breaking of moral laws. The book reflects the contradiction between power and morality in which Meinecke found himself involved as a result of World War I. He saw that war as a demonstration of the bankruptcy of the German ruling class and, acknowledging the necessity of a thorough change, became an unenthusiastic but loyal defender of the Weimar Republic.

Die Entstehung des Historismus (1936; Historism) traces the rise of historicism from Giambattista Vico to Leopold von Ranke. Meinecke’s emphasis on the importance of the private concerns of individuals implied a clear opposition to the Nazis, who valued a person only as an instrument of the state’s aims. In a smaller work, Die deutsche Katastrophe (1946; The German Catastrophe), Meinecke criticized forces and entities such as the Prussian state for preparing the groundwork for Hitler and the Nazis. After World War II he became the first president of the Free University of Berlin. In his later years he wrote a number of essays on the problems of historical theory, disclaiming any notion, however, of attempting to formulate a system of historical philosophy.

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